Could someone please help me out. Is it true that while there was a gunman shooting up a school

[EFerrari]

in Oakland, Federal drug warriors were raiding legal marijuana dispensaries this morning?

Is that what happened?

Link to school shooting story:

Officials: 6 dead in Christian school shooting

http://news.yahoo.com/officials-6-dead-christian-school-shooting-205748121.html

DEA, IRS, FBI raid story link

http://www.drugpolicy.org/news/2012/04/federal-agents-irs-dea-and-us-marshals-raid-oaksterdam-university-morning

I'd like to fucking know how many officer hours and how many lives this drug warrior crap is costing us.

[dems_rightnow]

1. No

Actually every Federal employee in the US was at the college.

[villager]

2. Sorta like the guy in Berkeley getting murdered, cause the cops were too busy targeting Occupy

...to respond properly.

You can see what the "real mission" of the police is, more and more clearly, each day.

[EFerrari]

7. It's nakedly obvious now.

How many units were attending to the attack on cancer and AIDS patients this morning?

This country makes me more sick every day.

[xchrom]

3. right now -- it seems like it. nt

[Swamp Lover]

4. Are you saying that if selfish potheads would give up their regulated activity, schools would be

safer? Good luck with that.

[EFerrari]

11. No, I didn't say that, not even close. nt

[Warren Stupidity]

22. Are you sure? 'cause that is exactly what I got out of your post.

[HangOnKids]

27. No shit Warren! n/t

[Aerows]

56. Yep, that's exactly what I got out of your post.

[mike_c]

28. are you admitting to being a disgusting right wing troll...?

Because that has as much resemblance to what you actually said as the words you put into EF's mouth had to what she said. Pretending that someone said something completely different so you can make an unrelated point is intellectually bankrupt. Not to mention trollish.

[Swamp Lover]

45. No. I'm identifying an ignorant absence of logic seemingly presented in support

of some ridiculous political agenda that minimizes the horror of murdered students.

This may come as a surprise to the teeny-boppers at DU, but pot smoking was going on long before there were dispensaries. As a matter of fact, the majority of pot smokers in this country get weed without dispensaires.

There is no equivalence or comparison between dope smokers having to look for weed and dead people.

Get over yourself.

[mike_c]

46. WTF? Dude, I don't think we're reading the same posts....

Like EF said, that isn't even close to what she wrote. The OP speculates whether the police response to mass killing at the religious college was diminished or delayed because police were busy raiding Oaksterdam University instead, much like another similar instance in Oakland when police presence at Occupy Oakland delayed their response to a shooting elsewhere.

on edit-- I doubt it, because the Oaksterdam raid was likely a primarily federal effort, but the question is legitimate as recent experience with Occupy Oakland has shown. I don't know where you got that bit about "selfish potheads" and school safety, or whatever.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

38. which "selfish potheads" are you referring to?

You got everyone's attention, just like you needed. Start talking.

[SomethingFishy]

50. Medical Marijuana equals Selfish Potheads?

You sir, are a fucking clueless asshole.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Yes that is exactly what happened. Which makes the long lost words of a Senator from

Illinois to the people of Oregon ring with irony:
“What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue simply because I want folks to be investigating violent crimes and potential terrorism. We’ve got a lot of things for our law enforcement officers to deal with."
http://stash.norml.org/barack-obama-opens-up-on-medical-marijuana

[Luminous Animal]

6. Yes. Absolutely true.

[onenote]

8. So, if federal officers hadn't been conducting a drug raid, they would be sitting in a college

classroom waiting to pounce on a crazy guy with a gun?

[girl gone mad]

10. We have real and serious problems in this country.

People buying and using marijuana is not one of them.

[Aerows]

57. Especially medical marijuana

If medical marijuana improves the quality of life for even 1/10 of the patients using it, it's worth it in my opinion.

Denying people medicine that helps them is just wrong, and you will never convince me otherwise. I don't even smoke pot, so legalizing it wouldn't affect me one way or the other, but denying sick people a helpful treatment is a crime.

[EFerrari]

13. You have access to libraries. Look up how many hours

our local resources have been pulled off of their jobs to harass and disrupt legal pot dispensaries. Thanks.

[onenote]

16. I agree completely that pot should be legal and that the feds should leave dispensaries alone

I just think that trying to connect the dots between this shooting -- a local police matter and one that is utterly unpredictable at that -- and federal overreach on pot enforcement is silly, just as it would be silly to say that there were probably undercover police trying to bust hookers or cops giving out parking tickets at the time of the shooting made the shooting any more likely to occur.

[EFerrari]

21. Are you kidding me?

Okay. So look up how many hours the OPD is spending "co-operating" with Federal fusion centers. On drug warrior cr@p, on Occupy Oakland. You know that Occupy Oakland has been the focus of the Federal push back on this coast, right? So, we're not starting from "zero", right?

There is nothing "silly" about this.

[onenote]

26. You still haven't explained how this shooting would have been prevented

if no OPD cops were spending any time on busting pot dispensaries. Maybe if you can connect those dots....

[EFerrari]

32. Don't rewrite my OP, especially if you assume that no OPD

are involved in all this drug warrior crap that this administration has inflicted on Oakland. No federal forces are going to conduct raids at multiple facilities in the city of Oakland without involving the OPD. Please.

And that's just these stupid raids, and not taking into account the now hundreds of hours of trying to counter OccupyOakland, equally stupid and especially so to lay on a police department already under Federal supervision.

[onenote]

34. Your OP implied that the fact that there were raids going on at the same time

as the shootings was somehow significant.

Look, I agree that taking OPD resources and devoting them to pot raids is a waste of resources that could be better used in community policing. And if you had posted about a street shooting that occurred in Oakland that might have been preventable by more community policing (whether or not the shooting occurred simultaneously with drug raids) I wouldn't have commented nor would anyone else. But you made it sound like the redirection of resources from community policing (in general) and the timing of this raid (in particular) was relevant to the fact the shooting occurred. But unless you can show how more community policing would have impacted this incident, you simply have picked a bad example to make what otherwise is a valid point.

[EFerrari]

47. Exactly backwards. Community policing is degraded when

other priorities besides the safety of the community are prioritized. Other priorities like playing Gotcha with Occupy and raiding pot dispensaries to send a political message. And we don't know if this was a preventable tragedy, do we, because the resources Oakland pays for were re-purposed for bullshit Federal game playing for months.

I didn't "pick a bad example". People died today after months of Eric Holder's DoJ tampering with the focus and effectiveness of the already lame and halt OPD WHILE he was supposed to be supervising them. That's not an example, that was life and death today in Oakland.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

40. you're arguing with the ghost of Harry Anslinger

This one is single-minded and hates, hates, hates marijuana users.

[Irishonly]

9. It looks like it could be

Raid at 7:00 a.m.
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Oaksterdam-University-Raided-by-Feds-145765015.html

Shooting happened this morning but I don't know the time.

[hughee99]

12. If only the school shootings were scheduled in advance,

I'm sure they could have rescheduled the raid.

I'm not saying I support the raid at all (I don't), but the police were bound to be somewhere else at the time the call came in for the shooting. The IRS and DEA that were at the busts wouldn't have responded to the school shooting anyway, and I'm not sure what the FBI's role is, but they may have sent agents to the shooting. I'm not sure that having law enforcement more readily available would have averted the tragedy, though.

[EFerrari]

15. You miss the point. "Fusion" with Federal witchhunts of several stripes

pull resources away from community policing. Not just this one day but all the days and hours erode the effectiveness of the already limping Oakland Police Department, which is under Federal Supervision -- which means the DoJ should be hyper aware of further undermining the readiness of the force to respond to local events.

[hughee99]

30. I agree with your overall point

but this particular example is one where police readiness wasn't the issue. From what I can gather from the story (and, granted, there's a lot of info that's not there), the police could have all been in their vehicles waiting to go wherever they were needed, and it wouldn't have averted this tragedy.

[EFerrari]

33. But it isn't just this one day at all.

It's the aggregate of time and attention and diligence lost to months of this crap as well as months of the mishandling of Occupy Oakland.

This fusion bs is not going to work for our communities. It might make the Feds feel more in control but in reality, they are not more in control and, at the same time, the day to day grunt work of policing a community suffers. The policy is a lose-lose.

[hughee99]

54. I agree, I just don't think this school shooting demonstrates that problem very well. n/t

[UnrepentantLiberal]

58. Have you ever been wrong about anything?

[Lizzie Poppet]

31. I agree, re: distribution of resources, but...

I agree, re: distribution of resources, but I don't see how additional community policing resources woudl have prevented this tragedy, save by the wildest of random chances. That school wasn't some sort of trouble spot that would have attracted beefed up patrols, etc. It's astronomically unlikely that even if you quadrupled Oakland's community policing resources that there would have been a cop there to intervene. The police are (for the most part) a reactive force.

"When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."

[cthulu2016]

14. How on earth are these two events connected?

The OP seems quite a stretch.

[EFerrari]

17. Which part of my OP is a stretch?

[Bluenorthwest]

18. The mass murder at the Christian School offers ironic contrast to the focus of authorities

on safe medicine the people made legal. Or, as some guy from Illinois once said he'd look at it:
“What I’m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue simply because I want folks to be investigating violent crimes and potential terrorism. We’ve got a lot of things for our law enforcement officers to deal with."

[kurtzapril4]

35. But that guy from Illinois...

He's powerless to stop this stuff. He's powerless to stop a lot of stuff, apparently. He's the most powerless POTUS of my lifetime.

[SoCalMusicLover]

19. They Both Happened In Oakland

Beyond that, there is not much in common.

Except to say that our FACIST government, has nothing better to do than raid medical marijuana facilities, operating legally under California law.

And yes, I KNOW, it is against federal law.

Perhaps if these resources wouldn't have been used to raid Oaksterdam, they would have been available for more serious problems. Like people getting killed at a college across town.

God I hate the world and it's people. Lay Off The Pot Smokers Fuckers!!

[Warren Stupidity]

20. Yes. This is exactly how screwed up our priorities are.

[EFerrari]

23. I may have to leave this thread for a while

because I'm about ready to puke right now.

[Warren Stupidity]

25. the Hollywood Cowboys have their hackles up.

Everywhere they go nuts with guns are killing people. Have some sympathy for the difficult task of defending the indefensible.

[Cerridwen]

24. The article at your second link appears to read that

they were in fact raiding three dispensaries.

That would make it even worse, if true.

Now I gotta go find more info to see if they were raiding one or three. Geez, E.

edit with more information re: raids:

Federal agents on Monday morning raided several properties owned by Richard Lee, the leader of the marijuana legalization movement in California, sources told The Bay Citizen. Agents also detained Lee at his home.

<snip>

Agents also raided Lee's home and the former site of Lee's medical marijuana dispensary Coffeeshop Blue Sky, which has been operating as an underground pot club.

Separately, federal agents raided the Oakland Hills home of Todd McCormick, a longtime medical marijuana activist, DEA spokeswoman Joycelyn Barnes confirmed. McCormick was arrested for growing pot soon after the state legalized medical marijuana in 1996 and currently grows put for patients, sources said.

<snip>

Agents entered Lee's home with guns early Monday morning, said Dale Sky Jones, chancellor of Oaksterdam. Lee, who uses a wheelchair, was detained for a few hours Monday morning at his home and then released, sources said. Four marijuana nursery workers were detained at Oaksterdam. Barnes confirmed that five people were detained, but said that no arrests were made.

<snip and more at link>

2nd edit because I forgot to close the damned tag.

[EFerrari]

44. Thank you.

[Cerridwen]

52. You're most welcome.

We're still on the 'same side', E.

Even though we part ways on occasion.

Remember the 'pajama party' during the days of the newly introduced DU2 unrec feature.

I love you muchly.

[boxman15]

29. The Drug War is a complete waste of resources and money, and does far, far more harm than good, but

the two events are completely unrelated.

The DEA, IRS, and FBI would not be involved with this shooting at all. This was scheduled in advance. Your point about the drug wars being ridiculous and a waste is right. But it has nothing to do with the shooting. Police were on the scene there.

[Taverner]

36. I don't get the connection

Yes, DEA agents shredded the constitution in Downtown Oakland this morning

But they didn't use any local PD for assistance - so it didn't constrain resources

HOWEVER, I do find it interesting that a mass murder takes place at a Christian School. So much for the "safer schools are private schools." There is just as much hate, loathing and resentment at Christian schools.

[EFerrari]

48. When Federal agencies raid multiple locations

the OPD is involved. Otherwise, they'd risk tripping over each others ... equipment.

[bayareamike]

37. Well I live in Oakland and went down to check out the scene earlier...

there were TONS of OPD officers, sheriffs, ATF agents, and even BART PD showed up. It is absolutely true that the feds were also raiding Oaksterdam at the same time, but it isn't as if that took away from the response to the shooting in any way, shape, or form.

Although it is a pretty dramatic image of what is wrong in this country...

[EFerrari]

43. Do you have enough information to draw that conclusion?

I think, no. And common sense says that if the already lame OPD has spent months on BART protests, and #OO protests and on Eric Holder's d!ck swinging over pot, that will have an effect on their ability to police the community.

[bayareamike]

59. Well, actually

based on all the info about the shooting that has been released law enforcement responded very quickly. In this particular instance, there is nothing to suggest otherwise.

I believe you're confusing this specific incident and the general trend. Regarding the latter, I would agree that the priorities of law enforcement and the government more generally are misplaced. They should be doing more to fight real criminals, not the producers and consumers of weed.

EDIT: In another post you imply that there is a connection between the DOJ and DEA persecuting MMJ dispensaries and the shooting yesterday. There is no proof of a causal relationship between the two. Any argument otherwise is simply opinion and speculation.

Let me ask you this: in what way would the authorities who were raiding Oaksterdam have prevented, assuming that they were not raiding the dispensary, the shooting at Oikos?

The shooter purchased his gun legally and gave no indication to anyone that he was going to shoot and kill people. The police would have had NO way to prevent it.

[cr8tvlde]

39. Four Recent Tragedies...

5 unarmed kids dead thanks to Concealed Carry
Stand Your Ground and Concealed Carry ... Martin kid killed because guy w/9mm was "afraid"...and has gotten away with it thus far

SCOTUS declares all Americans, including kids, subject to strip search on mere suspicion. We've lost our rights to keep our clothes on, for god's sake. And not for any gun or weapons..why? because they just don't fit internally.

Then...insult to injury

Feds raid the friendly and Happy Hippies over at Pot U in Oakland operating in the open helping people feel better and get well.

[Egalitarian Thug]

41. That information is classified.

Now get back to work!

Is it fascism yet?

[EFerrari]

42. Yessir!

[List left]

49. and why isn't msm making the connection? nt

[Betsy Ross]

51. I went shopping on my lunch hour. Lots of cops at the supermarket.

Many different agencies. When I got back to work, I found out that I was at the store the shooter drove to and reported to the store personnel that he just shot a number of people.

I was very disturbed by the raid on the Oaksterdam University this morning, but I really doubt that the shooting could have been prevented if many cops had not been busy with the bust.

[dimbear]

53. 7 dead. Suspect in custody 40ish male possible nursing student. Call to 911 at

10:33 AM.

[hunter]

55. Yep. Law enforcement could be working to keep guns out of the hands of violent unstable people...

... but they are too busy keeping medical marijuana out of the hands of gentle people with serious illnesses.